[gmiller123456]

    And couldn't that data be stored in an actual database? 

This is the "it's turtles all the way down" concept. A database is just going to store data in the file system, plus some extra overhead. Putting data in a database saves you nothing unless you actually need the extra functionality a database provides.

That overhead doesn't mean much if you have 10 users and 1gb of data. But it adds up in very large systems.